smart home

The smart home needs a remote, and one startup debuting on Kickstarter today thinks the smartphone isn’t necessarily the best option of that. NEEO is a dedicated device that includes a remote, as well as a brain to centralize control of your home, including your home theater equipment as well as connected gadgets like the Nest, Philips Hue and more.
NEEO is a Cupertino-based startup with… Read More

A smart home hub is a dumb purchase if most of your appliances aren’t smart, too. So Ukrainian startup Branto developed a hub that has a built-in 360-degree camera and speaker for security and telepresence, in addition to being able to operate gadgets over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and infrared. That’s a lot of functionality for $399, and it works even if your power or Wi-Fi goes do Read More

The leader of the “smart home” industry doesn’t want to call it that any more. Nest CEO Tony Fadell says his company uses the term “Conscious Home” because its connected thermostat and smoke alarm create a two-way relationship with users where both help and teach each other. “We call it the conscious home. Smart is overused. It’s not smarter than… Read More

At their headquarters in Chelsea, crowdsourced invention engine Quirky and its manufacturing juggernaut of a partner General Electric threw back the curtains on their play for the connected home.
They re-launched their spinout, Wink, announced seven new gadgets for the connected home, and the development of something the company is calling a “microfactory” in San Francisco that… Read More

Consumer home security devices usually consist simply of an Internet-connected camera of sorts, combined with motion detection and a supporting cloud service and smartphone app to ping you when a potential intruder is detected. Debuting on IndieGoGo today, however, is Cocoon, which adds ‘infrasound’ into the mix. Read More

Smart remote software maker Peel has closed an additional $50 million in funding, supplied by Alibaba, the e-commerce giant which recently made its public market debut in the U.S. The company’s new funding is a strategic investment separate from its existing $45 million raised across four rounds, with the most recent announced in June, and brings its total rase since its founding in 2009… Read More

Hey, who here gets excited about smart lightbulbs? Probably four of you raised your hands, and two of them were me. GE has taken a different approach to selling its new Link connected bulbs, eschewing sales pitches of convenience and connectivity in favor of trotting out a shirtless (and well-preserved) Jeff Goldblum.
The celebrated chaos theoretician is doing what’s known as… Read More

Belkin is going all-out on the connected home, with products ranging from connected lighting systems to smart outlets. But one of its oddest offerings might just be a collaboration with slow cooker industry leader Crock-Pot, whose name is essentially synonymous with fire-and-forget meal-making. Belkin and Crock-Pot now offer the Smart Slow Cooker with WeMo, a $130 kitchen appliance that… Read More

The march of sensors into our homes to furnish and flesh out the concept of the automated ‘smart home’ continues apace, rallied by the advent of device certification programs like Apple’s HomeKit initiative. To that end meet Notion, a smart home-focused hardware startup which is currently in TechStars’ Boulder program and also now raising crowdfunds on Kickstarter to put… Read More

I reach for the iPhone tucked down the side of my wheelchair and launch the Hive app. After a couple more taps on the screen, there’s an audible click from across the room. A few seconds later, I hear the boiler sparking up before the central heating finally kicks in. It’s a familiar sound, but this time the experience is profoundly different. Read More

Smart home automation startup Zuli has just raised $1.65 million in venture funding following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The company has created the Zuli Smartplug, a connected outlet that plugs into your existing ones and gains Bluetooth LE powers. A single outlet provides basic smart features, including in-home control of lights and appliances plugged into them, but when you get three… Read More

For the last few years there has been a lot of talk in the venture capital industry about automating the home and leveraging Internet-enabled devices for various functions in manufacturing and the traditional workplace.
The first wave of this was the use of the smartphone as a remote control, like the Nest’s ability to allow consumers to control their thermostat using their smartphone. Read More

Ravti co-founder Alex Rangel walked into TechCrunch with a stack of crumpled yellow slips in his hand. “This is what the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning industry still looks like,” he said, showing me a stack of papers with unintelligible scrawl.
But Rangel and his co-founder Chris Ginter want to make managing HVAC units easier for property owners by marking equipment… Read More

Ninja Blocks, the Australian startup that created Ninja Blocks to create physical triggers for IFTTT style recipes that can detect motion, temperature and humidity, a window and door sensor and more, successfully followed those up with the Ninja Sphere, a connected home smart hub which raised over $700,000 AUD back in January on Kickstarter. Now, the company is set to ship the Ninja Sphere, and… Read More

Created by a Hong Kong startup, Ambi Climate is the latest entrant in the smart air conditioner market. The smartphone-controlled device is designed to work with split-unit air conditioners that have an infrared sensor and use machine learning to keep your home at a comfortable temperature while reducing energy consumption. Ambi Climate’s first target markets are in Asia, but it plans… Read More

Imagine walking into a room, having it recognize you, then customize itself to your particular preferences. That’s not the future — it’s happening now thanks to an up-and-coming startup called Robin, which provides a “software layer for office buildings.” The Boston-based company has raised a $1.4 million seed round from Atlas Venture, Deep Fork Capital… Read More

Everyone’s gunning to be the platform for your smart home, including Apple and Google, but Quirky spin-off startup Wink has its range in stores as of today at The Home Depot, giving it access to a market of average consumers. The Wink platform is basically a central hub for devices from manufacturers, including Dropcam, Honeywell, Quirky, Schalge, Kwikset, Honeywell and more, giving users… Read More

New York-based “invention machine” Quirky, a company which turns crowdsourced ideas into real-world products you can buy like this popular flexible power strip, these connected milk jugs and egg cartons, and even app-connected air conditioners built in partnership with GE, is now venturing further into the “smart home” space with the spin-out of a separate company… Read More